


Soldado de la esperanza

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU - modern dress, Angst and Feels, F/M, Gen, Journalist Jyn, Jyn works for Draven in this AU, Latin American history and politics, arguing about white liberal guilt, kind of a rewrite of the Eadu shuttle scene, protest singer Cassian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-07-29 13:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20083165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: London music journalist Jyn Erso is sent to interview a politically-committed Mexican singer-songwriter, and finds herself forced to explain her own painful connection with the history of protest music in Latin America.





	Soldado de la esperanza

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Vadercat for the beta-reading and feedback!

She didn’t want to feel awkward around him. Hell, of course she didn’t, he was a Grammy-award nominee! Best World Music Album might not be one of the famous categories outside of some slightly rarefied circles, but still, those rarefied circles were where Jyn Erso worked. And Cassian Andor’s last album had won a Songlines Award, too. He was really not someone she should feel anything towards except respect and admiration. 

And he was good. Dear God, he was so good. Objectively she could only admire him; his beautiful, heartfelt songs, his musicianship, his playing. His bittersweet, smoky singing voice, that he used so skilfully and with such sincerity.

But. But, but, but. That sincerity; that painful, beautiful, crushing sincerity. How proudly he’d spoken at the end of last night’s gig, honouring his forebears in the “great Latin American tradition of political and protest music”. And then he’d sung “Venceremos”. The audience went wild. 

It had been all she could do not to stand up and leave. True, she would have had to fight her way out of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, pushing past people while they stared at the tears pouring down her face. Too humiliating. Her heart had thumped so hard in her ribs that she felt sick; palms sweating, mind whimpering, _it’s too much, don’t make me listen to that song, please! _But she had clenched her jaw and cried in silence. With people all around her crying for the right reasons, for honourable, pure, political reasons, not her shameful self-pitying ones.

Cassian Andor’s own songs were often in a similar vein; it was no wonder he’d spoken of the heritage of Nueva Canción. Jyn’s Spanish was rusty but more than up to translating titles and lyrics. Soy el soldado de la esperanza; Dedicarme; Fuerza y luz; Para un futuro mejor… It was the music of a young man offering himself, with courage and anger and honour, and a dedicated, uncorrupted love, to a cause he believed in.

She’d heard it all before, and seen what it could lead to. He seemed such a nice guy, too, sweet and honest and natural; and he was offering himself up for _that_. It made her want to scream.

And here she was in a half-empty café off the Charing Cross Road, waiting to interview him. Cassian Jerón Andor, Mexican singer-songwriter and proud inheritor of the mantle of the great Latin American tradition of protest music. And her, Jyn Erso, humble-nobody-journalist with palms sweating and head dizzy with tension, fighting not to show her nausea.

Of course, just to make matters worse, when he did show up, he was even more good-looking close-to than he’d been on stage. If a male colleague were to remark on the beauty of a female musician Jyn would have threatened to clock him (and they did, and she had, more than once). So there was no way she could admit even to herself just how handsome Cassian Andor was in person.

He really, really was.

She stood up and held out her hand. “Mr Andor, I’m Jyn Erso from Folk Roots magazine, very pleased to meet you. Thank you for making time in your schedule today.” Her voice at least held level and professional-sounding.

“It’s no problem.” Andor was smiling warmly. “And please, it’s fine to call me Cassian. Mr Andor sounds like a schoolmaster, don’t you think?”

Jyn smiled politely at the familiar simile. Knowing she’d feel even worse if she let herself call this handsome, sincere man by his given name. This terrifyingly handsome, terrifyingly sincere man.

_Please, please, let me get through this. I have to be professional. He can’t help representing so much to me and he can’t possibly have a clue why I’d feel this way, and I have no business holding it against him._

_Fuck Draven for giving this job to me and not someone who’d be unaffected by it. He knows my background. Honestly, sod him for this._

“So,” she said quickly, avoiding the name issue altogether “let’s talk about your new album. It’s your fourth, right?”

Their chat began. Genuinely relaxed and enthusiastic on his part; more studiedly so on hers. Her voice jarred in her own ears, she felt bitterly phoney, and she ploughed on anyway. _Just get it done with. Let el soldado de la esperanza do his thing, say his piece which he has every right to say and to have heard, and then we can both go home again. _

The soldier of hope. Handsome, sincere, committed. Heart-breaking. Terrifying.

He talked about corruption, about foreign interference, about inequality and injustice, about borders and terror and the fear of the Other. He made crisply cutting jokes and trenchant observations, in words that were calm and passionate. He was a true believer, and his cause was true; and it was no good, try though she might, Jyn just wanted to run away from it all.

She wished Draven had kept this job for himself. He could have conducted the interview and written the piece without feeling a thing. He barely seemed to have a heartbeat sometimes, or to breathe regular air, he was so analytical.

Cassian Andor certainly breathed. Under his soft tan he was slightly flushed with intensity. A little frown came and went between his brows. She could see how each time it appeared he realised a moment later and controlled it, only for it to reappear as he got heated again. Was it passion? Frustration? Simply down to how intensely he felt about everything? She was trying so hard to steer their discussion away from politics, panicking each time that she’d show her feelings and irritate him; but each time, he brought it back again. Clearly that was the side of things he wanted to discuss. If only she had the strength of will to bear it.

She tried to get him onto the influence of dance music. Tried to get him onto his guitar technique; his use of close harmony in accompaniments; whether he’d ever done any choral singing. Somehow, every topic, inexorably came round again to the political background, and the history of central and south American protest music. 

He mentioned Victor Jara, yet again. Yes, she was keeping tabs. She knew it with real shame. Why of all people did he have to idolise that one particular tragic and heroic man, and keep saying his name? All she could think of, each time, was that damned funeral, and “Venceremos” playing on Saw’s small portable cd player. Her parents’ Chilean exile friends singing along hoarsely in the rain; her own stupid helplessness as she sat looking up at the coffins. Couldn’t he have worshipped some Mexican musicians too? He did mention other names, Mexican and also Argentinean, also Colombian, also Cuban; but he kept coming back to that one.

Suddenly and to her horror, there was a tinge in her voice. A miserable note of acid, surfacing from the long ago, etching into the very sound of her words. “That’s the fifth time you’ve mentioned Victor Jara. You must really admire the guy.”

_Oh God, no, I can’t believe I said that. In that tone of voice. You fucking moron, Erso._

Cassian Andor blinked, and his face froze. When he spoke, his voice was ice too. “He is one of my greatest heroes. I am above all else a political singer, a protest singer. This is what I’ve been trying to explain to you but you’re not listening to me. Ms. Erso, you cannot divorce the music from the content, from the meaning it has, and you cannot divorce it from its history, which is the history of popular protest throughout the Americas. Victor Jara was a true hero. If you knew anything about him, his life, his work – his death – you’d understand how angry it makes me to hear you speak of him in that tone. As if his name was a – a dirty word.”

“I’m sorry.” Automatic professional politeness; and the fact it was automatic showed, she was sure. “I didn’t mean to – to imply –“

“Then what exactly is your problem with my musical inspiration?”

Caught between fear and defensiveness Jyn blurted out “I don’t have a problem with it, it’s just all so far in the past –“

“In the past? Oh, no. The struggle isn’t over.” He wasn’t even pretending to mask his anger now. “In my country, right now, we need people who will speak truth to power. People who aren’t afraid. And it’s the same in so many Latin American countries. Guatemala, Belize, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina; and in Cuba, yes, and Chile, very definitely still Chile. The struggle is real, in every country that has been crushed by dictatorship, anywhere that struggles with corruption. You - you speak as though you think I’m luxuriating in it! But the struggle for truth and freedom is very, very real. Some of us live it! –“

Christ Almighty, he was furious. And of course, he was right. She could hear the recordings her parents made at the Jornadas de Protesta Nacional; voices as impassioned as his rang in her mind, and she fought to keep a grip on emotions that shook and screamed and cut her through the heart. He was right, he was right, and this was what Mum and Dad had died for –

\- “and people have died for it!” Cassian’s eruption broke off sharply and he took a deep breath, visibly reining himself in. “I don’t owe it to you or any other second-rate journalist in England to explain why the living tradition of popular protest is still important. You don’t get to say _Oh bah, it’s all so long ago, it doesn’t matter anymore_. People have _died_, Ms. Erso.”

“I know!” It was torn out of her like shrapnel from a wound. “I know! I _know!”_

He had already stood up to go, was picking his jacket off the back of the chair, but he jerked to a halt. His face had been ice-cold but he blinked and the life came back into his eyes. He stood looking at Jyn as she scrambled to her feet.

He still had the height advantage but she felt marginally less vulnerable. She forced her shaking voice down, struggling to find some better words, but all that would come was a last despairing “I know…”

Cassian Andor’s expression was suddenly horrified. “Mierda. ¿Eres Chilena?”

“Oh God! No, no. Fuck. But - Draven should have sent someone else to interview you. I don’t know what he was thinking of.”

“But – I don’t understand. From – from another south American country, then?”

“No.” Jyn hung her head. She was just making it worse, and he would despise her the more when he knew the truth. “I have no right to be upset. No right to make this about me.”

“Then what is it you’re not telling me?” He sounded bemused. “No right to be upset about what?” She shook her head mutely, staring at the floor, but he went on. “I can tell there’s something. You can trust me, you know.”

She took her three deep breaths, counted to ten each time, and made herself look up. There was still a trace of anger lingering in his face but curiosity and compassion as well, and that beautiful sincerity. Her heart was thundering like a train, tearing through the cage of her breast. She forced another breath in, and held it like a bubble against the train crash of old pain, and released it. 

She’d done nothing to earn his kindness; and she had craved kindness for so long and so seldom known it. 

People had looked round at them when their voices rose in argument, but already now, just a couple of minutes later, not a single eye bent their way. _Londoners_, she thought cynically. _Once they knew we weren’t going to attack one another outright, no-one’s bothered by us anymore._

She sat down, nodding; held one hand out, clumsily asking him to take his own seat again.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s just – I – it’s not easy to talk about.”

“These things never are.”

“I know. I’ve heard my parents’ recordings. But that’s starting in the middle, sorry. Look, you know, there was a plan for a while, twenty years ago, to make a film about him? Your hero I mean. Victor Jara.”

“Yeah.” Cassian sat down again. All the anger seemed to have burned out in him suddenly. “Emma Thompson was working on a script, no? - but I read that it fell through.”

“That’s right, yeah. There were a lot of reasons, I think. I only really know about one.” She paused to breathe again. Fuck, this was even harder than she would have expected.

“It’s really disappointing,” Cassian said. “It’s such an important story, and it has so much relevance now. All over the world.”

“Yes.” _Damn it, I am not going to cry._ “Yes, it is, it has. And his music deserves to be remembered, too.”

“Exactly.” His tone was as patient and kind as a therapist’s; but he smiled and looked almost shy, and Jyn clung to that. “Music is the most powerful communicator, it will hit you in the heart. A song with a truthful message is a weapon for all humanity.”

Jyn shut her eyes for a moment, but _Shit, shit, shit, no use, _because here were the tears she’d been trying to hold back since last night. “My mother used to say things like that. She was a musicologist and she – specialised in the history of Nueva Canción, so she had a lot of Chilean friends, exiles, here in London. My Dad was a sociologist. Anyway, look, sorry, I’m rambling. Anyway. One of the reasons the film folded, one that didn’t get talked about much because there was no proof, nothing – the police said there was nothing – to link it to the film – but two of the people doing research for it, collecting oral history accounts, making recordings, two of the researchers – died.”

There was a tiny pause and he said “Ah,” with so much understanding she thought she would faint. Understanding, like oxygen to a heart suffocated since childhood. “Your parents?”

“Yes.” Jyn swallowed and looked him in the eye. She could breathe again, now she’d said that bit. “The official report was it was a robbery that got out of hand. But the only things taken were their papers. So I think they’d found something out, talked to someone. And I know I should be grateful that at least we got their bodies back. They weren’t Disappeared. And I know I have no right to focus on my own pain when –“

-“but why not? If you’re right, then this was an assassination. Two more lives taken brutally, two more victims of dictatorship.” His eyes darkened again. “Are you ashamed of them?”

“No!”

Jyn couldn’t explain even to herself why it was suddenly so wrenchingly, desperately important to tell him. He couldn’t give her any kind of absolution for the shame of her feelings. But he understood; so he might understand the rest, this heir of that tragic and heroic tradition of protest. “No. It’s because of what you said just now, you asked me _¿Eres Chilena?_ and I’m not. I’m not Chilean. Mum and Dad were minor casualties on the – on the margin of one of the _greatest human rights abuses of the late twentieth century_, but they were outsiders and I - I have –“ Saw’s words, so full of rage, deep down at the well-spring of unhealed pain – “no right to appropriate the suffering of an entire people and attach it to my own pain!”

“Do you really believe that’s what it is, to mourn your family? How old were you when this happened? – six, eight? If I heard someone tell a child something like that I’d think them very harsh. You have still the right to your own suffering, Ms. Erso. They were your family.”

People had turned and stared again for a moment, but his calm voice was enough to make them look away. They really weren’t interested in the young couple having the impassioned conversation. Just worried that their coffee and cake would be disturbed. Jyn felt another pang of bitterness. Ah, the British public. Self-absorbed and complacent. Their indifference a microcosm.

“It’s not the same,” she murmured. 

“No, it’s not the same, okay. Your family had the privilege of being gringos. Do you feel any better, hearing me say that? It didn’t help them any, though. White privilege is real and white liberal guilt is too, but indulging in the latter doesn’t take the power of the former away. And it doesn’t help anyone or anything for you to feel ashamed of how your parents died. Ms Erso, I’m sorry I shouted at you.” His eyes were kind now. Ugh, how she hated herself. “You need to let yourself grieve, surely someone has told you that by now?”

“Yeah, quite a lot of people, actually. I’ve had therapy, you know?” A bitter fraction of a grin pulled at her lips and she pulled it back, and hid it angrily. “But like you said, people have died for these truths, these struggles. Tens of thousands. Mum and Dad were - collateral. I’m not ashamed of them, Christ no! They were so honoured to have the chance to take part; proud of contributing, doing something useful with their skills. And I was proud of them. I’d been hearing these stories about the coup and the dictatorship since I was a baby. But my guardian made sure I knew it was different for me. We got the courtesy of the police at least pretending to investigate, we got their bodies back, we were treated so much better than the people themselves and when I think about that, then yes, I am ashamed.”

The frown came back between his brows, quick and full of sorrow. Ridiculously, she wanted to stroke it away. “Anyway,” she finished hurriedly “that’s why I freaked out just now. I’m just stupidly sensitive about the whole subject. I’m sorry.”

“Well. Thank you for telling me. You know that I can’t make any of this any less. But surely you do know it isn’t your fault? and it isn’t a thing you should be ashamed of or feel bad about. It sounds like your guardian was overdoing the whole liberal-left guilt-trip thing a bit, maybe?”

“He used to tell me that trying to repress my feelings was just as much an ego trip as indulging them. _Stop making everything about you, Jyn_. Pretty confusing for a kid. He blamed me if I grieved and he blamed me if I talked about my guilt.”

“He sounds a bit of a shit, forgive me for saying.”

She couldn’t help a harsh chuckle at the accuracy of that. “Yeah, I know. He wanted to be able to commit all his time to the cause, not be stuck with this miserable kid to look after. But anyway, look, enough about me.” She scrubbed her face dry on the backs of her hands. “I’m sorry. I know this is all so much bigger than me. And even though I don’t know if I’d have the guts to see it, I wish the fucking film had got made.”

“Otherwise the work your parents did was for nothing?”

“And because the story should be told.” Jyn shrugged. The tears had stopped falling and her breathing felt more-or-less normal again. God almighty, what a pathetic outburst. “Which is why Draven – he’s my editor – should’ve sent you someone who wouldn’t be affected by this, so that you could talk about your music, and all the history and politics and not have to deal with someone making it _all about them_ –“

“There you go again!” Cassian flung up his hands. ”That is not what you’re doing! Your parents were murdered. No-one has the right to make you hate yourself for having feelings about that, Ms. Erso.”

“Please call me Jyn.” Where the hell had that slipped out from? But she’d stopped thinking of him by his full name quite a while ago. He felt like a friend, like someone she could confess all her darkness to. “You should’ve had a proper interviewer, so you could share the story and the message. Ugh, and then I know even that is my mess of a mind, telling me I’m not a proper interviewer.” She let out another mirthless chuckle. “Yeah, had a lot of therapy but maybe a bit still more needed, huh?”

Cassian sat still, just looking at her for a moment. Jyn had almost convinced herself from sheer habit that he was about to send her away, before finally he said “I’m sorry you’ve found this a hard assignment. But for myself, I’m glad your magazine sent you, and not someone who wasn’t involved and wouldn’t be affected. I’m glad I’m talking to you.” A faint small smile, which grew, and lit him up. “This Draven person could have sent me someone who listens but doesn’t hear. Someone who’d smile politely and then edit me, you know? But you’re not going to edit me, are you? You know the truth of what I’m trying to say. You know it in your heart and in your bones, you know it _matters_.”

He was so alive. He was smiling at her. It was extraordinarily reviving. He was so good, and he had so much hope. He wasn’t just sincere and committed, but selfless too. Taking the time to find something to say that might just possibly make her feel better.

If their places were exchanged, Jyn wondered if she’d be big enough to do the same for him.

But their places never would have been exchanged. He was the one with the talent, and the strength of character to make proper use of it; and he was the one with the connection, the heart-level, root-level, incandescent bond with suffering and injustice. She was just a hack from London. 

Or was that the same problem again? Hating herself was so easy, so convenient, it exonerated her from ever having to really look at any of her feelings; she could just reject them and herself as disgusting. 

Her throat was still tight but she managed to agree “It matters.” Her cheeks were sticky where the tears had been. She took another three deep breaths, counting through the in-breath and the out-breath as Dr Mothma had taught her.

“You know, Jyn,” Cassian said, suddenly sounding hesitant, and not at all incandescent “I’ve had to deal with this too. Blaming myself. Being blamed. I grew up in a very privileged home, I had a nanny, I had a big garden to play in, a lovely home, pets, friends, fun, a good school, everything of the best. I grew up seeing the injustice and inequality around me and I felt so much guilt, because I hadn’t suffered and been oppressed too. And I’ve been shouted down, especially when I was first getting started I’ve been told to be silent, told it’s not my story to tell. But in the end, you can sit and stare at your shame or you can decide to do something about it. I decided to. Your parents decided to. I listened and I worked to make sure my music was truthful and then I did the thing I could do, and I did my best to do it right. All any of us can do, is take action, listen, and do our best. The time to act is now, it’s always now. Nothing else to be done.”

_The time to act is now._

_Maybe I can’t finish Mum and Dad’s work, maybe I’ll never know what it was they uncovered before they died. But I can act to help this man, as he’s asking. I can write an honest piece, I can make sure Folk Roots gives him a platform in this country, so he can go on telling the truth. I can do that._

“I don’t deserve you being so nice to me,” she said “not after the fuss I’ve been making. But thank you. I really, really appreciate what you’re saying. And I’m glad we’ve got this out in the open. I won’t edit you. I promise. And I won’t let Draven do it either.” 

“Okay, then we’re good.” He smiled. She was beginning to see how he had a smile of gladness and one of uncertainty. This one shaded into the latter; and for a moment his voice became less confident as he said “Perhaps I can ask you this also? – you mentioned recordings, your parents’ recordings? Do you still have them? I should love to hear those, if it was possible.”

“I think Saw kept copies.”

“Maybe – if I can invite myself – if you could bear to let someone hear them – maybe you could put me in touch with him?”

It felt like sticking a pole through her ribs but she made herself push home and say it. “Okay. He’s an awkward cuss, I warn you, but yes, okay. I’ve always wanted someone to do something with their research. Maybe I could – maybe I could take you down to meet him, sometime?”

“That would be amazing. Thank you!”

“Thank you for – for reminding me what really matters.”

He leaned forward in his seat. Such brilliant dark eyes. “I think you already knew, no? So – welcome home.”

Oh, there it was again, that irresistible sincerity. Jyn leaned into it, into him, as if he were the sun. Cassian Andor smiled, and she felt herself forgiven, and blessed; and suddenly, just like that, she was ready to work.

“So, what do you want me to write? Maybe this is all I can do, but help me make it count.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this one for a while; like Jyn in the story, I am very aware that this is not my history. But I hope (with Vadercat's help, for which many thanks!) this is reasonably sensitive about using an important piece of real history as part of a character's background.


End file.
